Christian Scientists Are Optimists

by William P. McKenzie

Christian Scientists, by virtue of their experiences, are confirmed optimists. Through the power of God, they have seen healing accomplished where human love and human skill had given up hope. They have seen apparently incurable bad habits reformed, with a change in that life as extreme as that which takes place in the earth each year when the cold of winter yields to the warmth of spring. They have seen bitterness, cruelty, and cynicism melt away, and kindness, joy, and gentle courtesy appear. They have seen such changes in their own lives brought about by the study and application of Christian Science. And they honor the bravery and fidelity of Mary Baker Eddy, who faced the world’s opposition and harsh misrepresentations, when she revealed the higher sense of God as the Savior of man, which she had learned by her own healing.

What does Christian Science do? It carries on that healing and saving work of which Christ Jesus was the Master. It teaches the practice of that Christianity of which Jesus was the Founder, whose coming the prophets foretold for centuries, and whose reappearance in this time is known by the “signs following,” — the same signs or proofs that were characteristic of the first appearance of Christianity.

Christian Scientists find that their faithful application of the teachings of Christian Science to all the problems of life have brought so many proofs of the power of good to overcome evil, that they foresee the ultimate triumph of good; and “forgetting the things that are behind,” they faithfully and persistently press forward in the direction of that goal.